218 MORTIMER : OPENING OF THE TUMULUS C: HOWE HILL," DUGGLEBY. 
large cross-formed trenches which had been cut north and south, 
east and west, through the centre of the mounds, and into the rocks 
below, to a depth of from 8 to 9 feet. Probably these sherds are 
the remains of pottery ussd and broken at the opening and other 
ceremonies connected with these excavated crosses. From the find- 
ing of so large an amount of pottery in this instance, we were led to 
believe that an excavated cross, similar to the three named above, 
and serving a similar purpose (probably as a sacred Moot-hill symbol) 
had once existed on the summit of the Duggleby Howe, and that, 
when the present Sir Tatton Sykes, in 1870, placed a wooden cross 
on the summit of this mound he was unconsciously replacing an old 
symbol, of a similar import, which had been removed by the excava- 
tions made by the late Mr. C. Sykes three quarters of a century before. 
The symbol of an excavated cross dates back, probably, from the 5th 
to the 7th century, when the top of the mound was made flat, and in 
other ways fitted for a Folk Moot, for which purpose it most likely 
served for many centuries. Whether or not " Willy Howe " had a 
flat top at the time it was first opened seems somewhat uncertain ; 
but the mound " Mickle Head," at the foot of Garrowby Hill, has a 
flat top 60 feet in diameter, and several other large mounds in other 
parts of Yorkshire possess this feature. As the excavation proceeded, 
and the central opening had reached a depth of 9 feet, it was 
observed that portions of the old opening made by the late Rev. C. 
Sykes, as well as the bottoms of the southern and eastern arms of the 
excavated cross, extended nearly to this depth. The undisturbed 
portions of the two arms of the cross contained about 18 inches of 
pure clay at the bottom, as well as a block of grey limestone, worked 
into the form and about the size of an ordinary building brick ; 
and a piece of grit-stone which seems to have had a circular 
hollow cut into the middle of it, which may be a portion of the 
bottom stone of a primitive handmill. In addition to those found in 
the upper portion of the mound we took from the material filling the 
old opening, and in the disturbed portion of the arms of the cross, a 
few more pieces of the two disturbed human bodies ; portions of the 
heads and other bones of two large dogs ; the right side of a hoof, 
and other bones of an ox ; four teeth of the horse and two pieces of 
